On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, User1 wrote: > I still think Plex86 should share code with DOSEMU and with the Bochs that > is being developed on Sourceforge. It's interesting how people who don't > know much about things will be delighted to offer their oppinion that we > can't do what DOSEMU does for SVGA... but can they say why, in a way that we > can understand?
Yes, I can. Plex86 is under the LGPL license. Last time I checked DOSEMU was under the GPL. Therefore, Plex86--which uses the LGPL--has an incompatible license and cannot be cross-linked with any GPL project's internal code. This means that Plex86 can use code orignally written for DOSEMU, or any other GPL'd project. > > A while ago I posted to a mathematics newsgroup a method for calculating > square roots. That post was intended to teach people who don't know how to > calculate the square root of a number like 3, with only a paper and a > pencil. Many people claimed it wouldn't work. Then someone realized that it > was a special case of what mathematics textbooks call Newton's Iteration; > then those people moved on to say, OK it will work, but everyone already > knows it and besides Newton figured it out long before me so it doesn't > matter, does it? This is true to a point. Remember, people in Newton's day thought of Math and Science as something to be shared at no cost. These days intellectual property is much more sacred to the individual than is used to be. You are also right to point out that someone has already solved a similar problem--and that like the mathematician we shouldn't bother to re-create the wheel. I agree with this argument, but we aren't doing the same thing that DOSEMU does at the machine level. Therefore we need to solve the problem ourselves. As far as the argument about code sharing with bochs--some of the stuff being written for bochs isn't currently suitable for plex86, and some other stuff just doesn't apply. As for those things that do seem to be true duplicate projects--I appreciate that people are willing to point them out--but sometimes duplicate approaches exist for a reason. We need to as a group be willing to accept both possibilities. |^^^ | | |^^| |^^^ Drew Northup, N1XIM |^^| | |^^^ \ / /^^\ /^^~ |__ | | | | | |__| | |___ \/ |__| |__ | | | | | | www.plex86.org | | | /\ | | | \ ___| |__| |__| |___ web.syr.edu/~suoc/ | |___ |___ / \ \__/ \__/
